


Family Jewels: A due Noir Mystery

by lightspire



Category: due South
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Detective Noir, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 02:14:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21468388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightspire/pseuds/lightspire
Summary: A femme fatale, a missing ruby, and a Chicago gumshoe on a dark and stormy night.
Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski (implied), Stella Kowalski/Ray Vecchio
Comments: 16
Kudos: 11





	Family Jewels: A due Noir Mystery

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU.  
With apologies to every noir writer in the history of always.

_ Crash _ ! 

Thunder rattled the squad room windows and lightning flashed through slanted Venetian blinds. Forget cats and dogs — it was raining lions and wolves outside. Heavy rain sheeted off the asphalt roofs, overflowed the gutters. Rivers of water and floating garbage flooded the storm drains, turning the fetid Chicago city streets into an open sewer.

I was working late, cursing my luck, buried in paperwork, and bored out of my skull. White fluorescent glare from the overhead lights reflected off my formica-topped desk wherever it wasn’t covered by stacks of files. I rubbed my eyes. When I opened them again, I noticed a piece of lint on my cuff and flicked it off. 

I had on my dark grey suit, Armani, of course. Burgundy tie to show off the olive green of my eyes. A patterned shirt for a bit of pizazz, with a matching pocket square because I’m a snappy dresser. A style pig, that’s me. One very bored style pig, itching for a case. 

A clap of thunder shook the building. The lights went out, plunging the squad room into darkness. The lights flared back to life and there  _ she _ was, striding through the doorway like she owned the place. Heels clicked on the linoleum as she walked, the staccato tick - tick - tick of a time bomb, leaving a cloud of perfume and lust in her wake. 

The dame was a real-life femme fatale: neckline down to there, gams that went all the way up, meeting somewhere in the middle under a slinky black slip of a dress. Acres of pale skin barely hidden by a dripping wet raincoat. Plenty of curves that went in and out in all the right places. Black silk hose with a seam down the back and a pair of strappy stilettos that could pierce a man’s heart. 

Her face was hard, angular. A classic beauty with cheekbones so sharp they would make a butcher jealous. Aqua-blue eyes, pouting lips red as blood. Her crowning glory, a tumble of blonde hair that came from a very expensive bottle, flowed in waves down to her shoulders. A fistful of diamonds glittered at her neck. In her hands she clutched a patent leather bag that cost a week’s worth of my salary. A Cartier watch encircled one delicate wrist. Everything about her screamed to everyone in the room that they were completely outclassed.

All the guys stared as she sashayed past — the women too, and who could blame them — her hips swaying like the Edmund Fitzgerald in a gale. She was a walking Witch of November, doom to any man who dared to board her. If looks could kill, the squad room would’ve been a mass-murder scene.

She stopped in front of my desk, a perfectly manicured hand resting on the curve of her hip.

“I’m looking for a gumshoe, name of Vecchio,” she purred, her voice a velvet-wrapped sledgehammer. “You him?”

“What’s it to you?” I asked, leaning back in my chair, playing it cool.

“I need a man.”

“Oh yeah?” I gave her my smoothest smile, set my fountain pen down, stroked a hand slowly down my tie. “What kind?”

“Somebody who looks for answers in a bottle of whisky and asks questions with a gun. Somebody who knows how to get things done.”

She’d more or less described me better than a two-bit classified ad. I wasn’t above doing whatever it took to get the girl, crack the case, throw any bad guy worse than me into the slammer. Shoot first, ask questions later. Hide the evidence, miscount the drugs, and deny the under-the-table payoffs, nobody the wiser.

“Well, then,” I nodded, “it's your lucky night. You’ve found him. What can I do you for, Miss...?”

“Call me Stella. I got a case for you. A con stole my family jewels.”

I glanced towards the diamonds at her neck and raised an eyebrow.

“Not these old things,” she said, flipping her wrist like they were something out of a penny gum-ball machine. “A priceless ruby pendant, size of your fist. You in?”

If the diamonds around her neck were nothing to her, you could bet your last wooden nickel I was interested. But I didn’t tell her that. I needed more to go on.

“Who stole ‘em? And why? I need a name and a motive deep enough to swim in, babycakes, then we’ll take it from there.”

“Oh, I got a name all right. Stanley ‘Uppercut’ Kowalski. Bent cop. Maybe you know him.” 

“Bent?” I asked, sitting up a little straighter. 

“Kowalski’s so crooked, if he swallowed a nail, he'd spit up a corkscrew. He got in deep with some card sharks, so he thought he’d help himself to my property to pay off his debts. But I’ve got a lead on him. If we leave right now we might be able to catch him.”

A bent cop, eh? That sounded right up my alley. I couldn’t stand competition.

“Let’s go get the scumbag.” I stood up, put on my trench coat, and parked my trilby on top of my too-shiny balding head. I grabbed my umbrella and offered her my arm. 

“Ooh, you’re a regular gentleman, aren’t you,” she hummed, her voice sultry as she ran a fingertip down my lapel. “I could get used to a man who knows how to treat a lady.”

“Stella my dear," I said, "this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”

***

I escorted her to the Riv. The slap-slap-slap of the wipers tapped a watery rhythm as we made our way down the rain-slicked streets. Neon signs from the bodegas blinked on and off, plastering their garish pink and orange light down the windows like spilled paint.

I drove into the night. We passed smoky gin-joints with bartenders named Eddie and saxophone music leaking out into the dark alleyways. Past expensive restaurants that charged steep prices for flat food. Past boarded up shops with winos sleeping rough in their doorways. Until we reached a part of town that even bad guys with any shred of self-respect avoided. The people who lived here, if you could call it living, were smudged with the kind of dirt that can never be rubbed off. 

221 West Racine. Scummiest of the scummy.

“You sure the guy lives here?” I eased the car into park.

“Not him. The harlot he sleeps with.”

The street was dark. The only streetlight that wasn’t shot out stuttered and buzzed overhead, fighting the night and losing. At least the rain had slowed to a steady drizzle — the kind that chills you like a cheap fridge if you stand in it long enough. An uneasy wind blew a crushed beer can down the street. It skittered and jumped at our feet like a nervous animal as we went inside the half-crumbling brick building.

***

I knocked on the door of apartment 3J, my knuckles sounding like a drum on the thin wood. A dog barked inside. From the sound of it, a big one.

“Chicago PD,” I said.

“Down, Dief.” A woman’s voice, and the dog went silent. 

The door creaked open a few inches, and the woman said softly, “May I see some ID?”

I showed her my badge.

“I need to ask you a few questions, Ma’am, if I may. We’re looking for someone.”

“Of course, Detective, I’m always happy to assist an officer of the law.” 

She opened the door all the way, and my jaw hit the floor like an Acme anvil.

The dame was tall. Really tall, like one of those California redwoods you read about. A knockout, too. She had smoky blue eyes framed by dark lashes, pink lips, high cheekbones. Her fire-engine-red hair was cut in a long bob, which made her look like some kind of ginger Lucy Lawless. She wore a tailored aqua blue dress, patterned scarf tied at the throat, all respectable-like. She looked more like a Catholic schoolteacher than a woman of ill repute. If Red really was some kind of brazen hussy, she was one of those high-end numbers, the kind you get from an escort service. Nothing I could afford on a cop’s pay.

I glanced over at Stella, who was standing behind me. “You sure this is the right place?” I asked her.

Stella nodded, Her lips pressed together in a tight, angry line as she stared daggers at the other woman.

I took off my trilby. “May we come in, Miss...?” I asked. Maybe if I turned on the charm I could persuade her to spill what she knew.

“Fraser.”

“Miss Fraser. May we come in for a minute? We need some information.”

“I see,” she said. “Well, perhaps I can spare a few minutes. I was in the middle of grading papers.” She gestured towards a small kitchen table, then waved us through the door.

There wasn’t much to the place. The flat was spare, nearly empty. A bare unshaded bulb hung from the ceiling. A few pieces of furniture broke up the space: a bed, a lamp, some wooden chairs at the table, a ratty armchair next to a bricked-up fireplace, a closet. An empty vase sat on the counter. It was about as cosy as a parking lot.

The dog sniffed at our feet. And yeah, it was huge. Big as a wolf. A husky maybe, hard to tell.

“Lie down, Diefenbaker,” Miss Fraser told it. The animal barked once and trotted to the far side of the room where it lay down on a rug, watching us.

“We have reason to believe,” I began, “that someone you know might have stolen something belonging to my lady friend here.”

“I see. Go on.”

“You know anyone by the name of Stanley Kowalski?”

“Indeed I do. He’s a most brave and upstanding officer of the law, like yourself.” 

Yeah, right. 

“If you say so. When’s the last time you saw him?”

Miss Fraser shifted in her chair, uneasy. “Just a few moments ago.”

Weird. We didn’t pass him on the stairway.

“Do you know where he might have gone? My companion, Miss Stella…”

I realized I hadn’t bothered to get Stella’s last name, and shook my head. You’d think I’d have learned by now not to let a pretty girl turn my head and make a rookie mistake like that.

“Kowalski. Stella Kowalski,” Stella said, her voice hard.

Red raised an eyebrow, looked back and forth from Stella to me.

I turned to face Stella myself. Kowalski? Like the guy who supposedly stole the ruby? I didn’t like the sound of that. If this was a domestic, I wasn’t nearly as interested.

The closet in the far corner of the room slammed open, making us jump. A tall, skinny man stormed out, his body tense and angry like a coiled snake. 

“Stella! What the hell are you doing here?” 

His hair and skin were the color of Old Yeller, with a hangdog expression to match. He looked like the kind of guy who’d kick you in the teeth then punch you in the stomach for mumbling, and he was headed straight for Stella.

Stella leapt at him, screaming. “Ray, you bastard! Where’s my ruby?”

Ray? I thought his name was Stanley. This was getting more confusing by the second.

“For heaven’s sake, Stella! What are you talking about?” He grabbed her wrists and held her back so she couldn’t sock him.

I didn’t like the looks of this at all. I leaped after Stella, heading for Stanley or Ray, or whatever his name was, not thinking too straight. My only goal in that moment was to protect the lady. So I did what came natural — I slugged him right in the kisser.

“Stop!” I heard Miss Fraser yell. 

“Get him, Ray!” Stella shouted back, egging me on. At least I think it was me she was egging on. 

Red yelled at me again, but I didn’t stop, I kept on going, overcome by some kind of pent up anger, a misplaced sense of chivalry, I don’t know. Stella had gotten under my skin.

Next thing I know, I felt a hard knock on the head, heard a crash of pottery. Everything went black, and I dropped like a sack of potatoes. Miss Fraser had knocked me out with that vase. 

When I came to, my head felt like a guy with a jackhammer was up there pounding away. I reached up and felt a lump on my noggin the size of a golf ball.

I was sitting in the armchair, under the watchful eye of the dog and Stanley. Stella was perched in a chair by the table, kept in place by the stern gaze of Miss Fraser. The look on Red’s face made me shiver. Glad I wasn’t one of her students. I could just imagine her with a ruler in her hand, ready to smack the knuckles of any misbehaving rugrats. She looked like a real strict disciplinarian. Not that I’d mind…

Miss Fraser stepped over to me and handed me a bag of something cold and wet. Ice.

“For your head, Detective Vecchio,” she said. “I apologize for knocking you out, but you were assaulting Detective Kowalski and wouldn’t listen to reason.”

I stared up at her, dumbstruck. She really was gorgeous. A red-headed Florence Nightingale.

“Put your peepers back in your head, Vecchio,” Kowalski growled, balling his hands into fists, “or you’ll only be able to look down that long nose of yours through one eye.”

So Kowalski wasn’t just a thief and stepping out on his missus, he was the jealous type too. Wonderful.

“You’re under…” I started to say, trying to stand up, but Kowalski pushed me back down.

“Sit down and shut up,” Kowalski said. “Don’t go arresting anybody until you’ve heard us out.”

“Detective,” Red said, trying to calm me down with that siren’s voice and succeeding, “I believe you’ve been misled into thinking my friend here,” she pointed to Stanley, “is some kind of criminal.”

“Thief!” Stella accused from her chair.

“What the deuce, man,” Stanley said. “I ain’t no thief.” He jabbed a finger at Stella. “She’s pulling a fast one on you. Trying to frame me, get you to take me out.”

“Liar,” Stella said. “You stole my jewels, and Detective Vecchio is merely helping me to retrieve them.”

The dog growled at Stella. 

“Diefenbaker,” Miss Fraser warned.

Stella clutched her purse closer and the dog growled again.

“What is it, Dief?” Stanley asked.

The dog lunged for her purse and snatched it out of her hands. 

“No!” Stella screamed, but Miss Fraser stopped her from going after the animal.

“Lemme see,” Stanley said, and the dog trotted over to him, purse in its jaws. He reached into the handbag and held up a ruby the size of a Cubs’ baseball. “Is this what you’re looking for?” Kowalski whirled on Stella. “Who put you up to it, honey? And what for, a bit of lettuce? If you needed moolah that bad you coulda come to me, you know that.”

Damn it. The whole thing was a setup.

“What gives Stella?” I said. “You’ve been leading me on—” 

She was about to protest, with some fancy lie no doubt, but she dropped her hands and glared right at Stanley. 

“You’re nothing but a two-timing, two-bit con,” she pointed a finger at her husband. “All this time, cheating on me with that tramp.”

“I never!” he shouted, his face indignant. “Not once. Besides,” he turned towards me,” this isn’t what it looks like. Fraser and I —”

“ _ Miss _ Fraser,” Red corrected him.

Kowalski looked at her. “Uh, right. Yeah. Miss Fraser and I are working a case out of Vice at the One-Nine, tracking some very rare old Scotch that started showing up on the street.” He pointed an accusing finger at Stella again. “And  _ you _ divorced me, remember? Because I wasn’t good enough for you.”

I’d been had. Played for a sucker. This was a domestic spat and I’d walked right into it, blinded by beauty and a whiff of money. 

The case had never been about rubies, it was always about rubes. And the number one rube here was me. I shoulda known — what would a Gold Coast Girl want with a guy like me, anyway? Anything that looked like it was too good to be true, usually was.

Hell hath no fury, and here we all were because of a woman scorned. A waste of everyone’s time with nothing but a knock on the head and too much paperwork to show for it.

But I’d come this far, might as well go the rest of the way. I wasn’t letting this case go without something in it for me. If Stella wouldn’t have me, and there wasn’t a sparkly trinket in store as a reward, maybe I could get Miss Fraser interested. In for a penny, in for a pound, right?

“Hey, doll face,” I said to Red, giving her an appraising look. “What’s a nice girl like you doing with a loser like him anyway? He’s got all the sex appeal of a tumbleweed. You some kind of badge bunny or what?”

“You will kindly refer to me as Miss Fraser, not ‘doll face’," she said, giving me that stern look again. "I’ve no idea what a ‘badge bunny’ is, and I’d appreciate it if you would refrain from suggesting that my relationship with Detective Kowalski is anything other than professional.”

I raised my hands. “All right, all right honey, don’t get your pantyhose in a twist. I was just trying to be nice. You know, you’d be a lot prettier if you smiled.”

I could’ve sworn she was about to hit me again, but luckily, she’d already clocked me with the one vase in the room. Instead she narrowed her eyes to slits, like some kind of great big angry animal, and I backed off. Oh well, win some, lose some.

“So, Kowalski," I asked, "you wanna press charges on Stella for setting you up, and I file charges against Miss Fraser here for assault, or can we just pretend it didn’t happen and call it a night?” 

If it were up to me, I’d let this one go like last week’s fish wrappers. I sincerely hoped he’d take the deal and we could amscray.

Kowalski nodded his head. “No charges. Just go.” He turned to Stella. “Goodbye, Stella. Keep your powder dry.”

She huffed. 

“Come on, Stella,” I said. “I’ll drive you home.” 

I started to offer my arm but paused. I realized I didn’t know a thing about this dame, whether she was dangerous to me or if I’d just been her patsy for the night. 

“Baby, you’re not gonna pull a gun on me or anything like that, are you?” I asked, not that I expected her to tell me the truth.

She lowered her chin and smiled at me. “Oh honey, I don’t need a gun. I’ve got  _ concealed _ weapons.”

With that, she turned and strutted out the door without another word, her heels tapping the old wooden floors like nails being driven into a coffin.

I’d like to say that’s the last I saw of her, but like a bad penny, she had a way of showing up in my life again. But that’s another story for another day.

Sometimes, bad things happen to good people, worse things happen to bad people, and nobody wins. Call me jaded, call me cynical — that’s just the way it is. 

Just another night in the Windy City in the life of a gumshoe, case closed — until the next time.

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> The line "kick you in the teeth and punch you in the stomach for mumbling" is paraphrased from "The Big Sleep" (1946) - Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe.
> 
> Written for the 2019 genre challenge, ds_flashfiction comunity on Dreamwidth, (November, 2019).


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